


with caves of ice

by NotQuiteHydePark



Category: X-Factor (Comics), X-Men (Comicverse)
Genre: Christmas Decorations, Christmas Fluff, Gen, M/M, Snow and Ice, Telepathy, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-02
Updated: 2019-01-02
Packaged: 2019-10-02 23:03:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17272814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NotQuiteHydePark/pseuds/NotQuiteHydePark
Summary: Chapter 1 takes place sometime during the Iceman ongoing, first series (2017). Chapter 2 takes place early on in Extraordinary X-Men. Chapter 3 takes place after Marvel Bizarre Adventures: Iceman, and before Uncanny X-Men 129. The St. Paul winter carnival is real, and very much recommended. Title by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.





	1. Central Park

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nausi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nausi/gifts).



Coming out, getting in fights, almost moving to L.A.,not moving to L.A. at all… one thing that hasn’t changed for Bobby is Christmas, the nondenominational, ornamental, festive part with the winter-themed decorations, for which, every year, Bobby has made himself responsible.

And “responsible,” since it’s Bobby, means a panoply of whimsy around the mansion, sculptured in ice: goofy busts of Charles Xavier’s head, three-foot-tall snowflakes on the roof, three-pronged ice-slices in the shape of Logan’s claws that lead from the bedroom window to the motorcycle garage, and, once, a massive Shi’ar cruiser, with holly and ivy and berry decorations. 

This year the decoration process has been uncommonly public, since it’s all in Central Park. Reporters show up with cameras to watch Bobby recreate, carefully, in ice, the X-Men’s (public) greatest hits: the very first fight with Magneto, for example, represented by a rocket gantry, a horeshoe magnet, and a Christmas wreath. There is, of course, also a Hannukah menorah, and a series of trees, sculpted in ice, to hint at the holy days of various faiths: a Bodhi tree (ficus religosa), a baobab, a date palm, a redwood, a pine. The grand ice trunks and spreading branches sparkle in the cold, in the afternoon sun; if you get the framing just right you can see how they work against the real trees at the edge of the park.

Or you can play on the slides. Bobby’s still making them (they tend to come last), and he’s not even done with the second one; nor has he put in the safety rails.

“Time is on your slide!” he shouts when Kitty pops out to see how long Bobby needs; there’s some sort of holiday party or media event coming up tonight. (It goes with Jean’s campaign to make mutants look good, and keep them in the public eye.)

Kitty shakes her head. “Just glad to see you’re having pun,” she says, and phases back indoors. “Don’t forget to say freeze.” She hasn’t forgiven him for almost quitting the school—I would never quit my job for a boyfriend, she said at the time—but she knows she has to forgive Bobby soon. 

His holiday decorations are going to help. They’re really above and beyond this year; they remind him of the Dartmouth Winter Carnival, but with extra X’s all around. And an ice climbing wall (tilted for safety). And slides. Some of the slides are for younger children, like Shogo; when they’re finished, all of them are going to come with a mound of soft snow at both ends. But they are far from finished now.

“Hey!” Bobby shouts. “That’s not OK!” He’s forgotten to ice-fence off the north end of the mansion’s real estate—it isn’t set off from the rest of the park-- and somebody seems to be running in from the Ramble. It’s a child, tall for a kid, with dark hair, making some sort of happy screeching noise. Bobby is stuck at the other end. These slides aren’t safe yet—far from it. But the child clambers up the ice-steps of the tallest slide, leaps into the air, turns sideways, and zooms down the four story slide, squealing happily as her black and yellow high tech winter gear makes her descent down the slide’s twists and turns almost frictionless…. 

Except that Bobby hasn’t built out the bottom of this particular ice slide yet, nor has he made the safety slush below. That kid could get killed. Bobby elevates himself on an ice slide and zips to the edge of the property but it’s too late. Momentum shoots her through the air like a cannonball (not like Sam; like an actual cannonball) until the harsh arc of her descent is over; she’s hit a big rock, and goes down with a thud, face first.

By the time Bobby gets near the kid’s body, spread on the ground, he can see that she’s breathing but also that her legs are splayed apart in a sickeningly unlikely formation. She’s going to need access to a healer, stat, and even then: can she walk? Did she hurt her spine? Did she do something to her neck? Don’t move her, don’t move…

Bobby gets close enough to lift up the hood on her hoodie, sees that her neck might really be broken—no one’s neck makes that angle voluntarily—and starts to say “Don’t move!”, his system flooded with adrenaline and shame, all sense of fun gone.

Then the kid moves her neck in a three quarter turn, her black bangs fall over her wide eyes, she smiles, and she begins to squat, then starts to stand, and does stand, even though one of her legs is still turned backwards, kneecap and ankle on the wrong side.

“Gabby.” Laura Kinney jumps down from a tree. “I asked you to wait, but you just could not wait to explore the decorations Bobby has put up this year. I think they are plenty of fun myself, but there are civilians watching us around here; you really need to be more careful.”

Gabby stands up, looks at Bobby, looks at the All-New Wolverine and smiles as she rotates her left leg back the right way round. “But Bobby’s so good at this stuff,” she says. “Can’t we trust him?” She’ll be fine. She’s already healed, which is more than Bobby’s feelings have done.

“Besides,” she adds, “Wade said it was OK.”


	2. Limbo

“I’m about ready to give up,” Bobby says to Ororo. 

“We need this,” she says. “It’s a mutant tradition; the younger ones are expecting it. Frankly, the older ones are expecting it too. And here in X-Haven we don’t get the regular seasons that people who come from the North are expecting; nor do we get the other seasons—the wet and dry ones, or the seasonal winds—that I remember from my own youth. “

“Then you’ll have to try one more time to help out,” Bobby says. “It’s just not happening without you.”

Bobby points up to the nearest gable, past two windows’ safety bars, to a side door, to the railing beside the door: all are wet and slushy, and some look discolored, as if they’d be sticky to the touch. The temperature in Limbo varies from segment to segment, from plateau to karst caves-cape to lakes of fire, but almost nowhere does it go below freezing; and in those places, it’s far too cold for human life. X-Haven has the approximate climate, rainfall and humidity of San Antonio, Texas. Not bad for an extended stay, but if you’re into ice sculptures, it’s…not quite St. Paul.

Storm stands, spreads her arms, sighs and clasps her palms together. Ice and sleet cover the mansion and then recede, and Bobby starts to do his work: snowflakes, miniature Christmas trees, tiny icy skateboards, Mutant Pride symbols and the rest emerge from the precipitation and, mere minutes later, start to sag and crack in the heat.

“I could make them bigger,” Bobby says, “so they would last longer.” But Bobby is already panting. “I could see if teen Bobby wants to help out…”

“This is your task,” Ororo says. “Let him have fun and not feel responsible for decorating the whole of X-Haven, or at least not this year.”

“Got it,” says the adult Bobby Drake. He takes a deep breath and snowballs start to form on the roof of the mansion. “It’s a lot easier in a combat situation, frankly. They don’t have to last.” A big snowball rolls off the roof. “Can you maybe do something more permanent with the climate?”

“If only I could,” Storm says, slowly. “I have endeavored to learn long term climate control; once the terrigen crisis is handled, however we handle it—and I know that we will handle it—keeping the temperature down and the moisture constant in Earth’s atmosphere strikes me as the most important thing mutants can do, if in fact we can do it. But I do not have that kind of skill, or not without a kind of power amplifier to which we have no access in Limbo. And if I did I would not use it for sport.”

“Sorry to push your buttons, Ororo,” Bobby says. Almost absent-mindedly, he crafts a gnome-sized Santa Claus, with beard, sack and hat; almost immediately, the Santa Claus begins to drip, and water pools around him, as if he had started to weep.

“There is one more thing I can try,” he says, sighing. Storm raises an eyebrow. 

Bobby walks into the mansion and then out again. There’s some muffled shouting.

“I’m on my way”: a slightly unearthly voice, as if coming from out of the distant red clouds.

After the voice comes a blond woman, dressed all in black, with a massive sword. She’s holding a kind of scaly, scowling, cat-sized creature in one hand. The creature appears to be belching flames. “What’s up now?” Illyana asks, looking at Storm, not at Bobby. “I hate being a building super. It was easier just being Demon Queen.”

“At least you’re not a taxi,” Bobby says. 

“Yes I am,” she responds, and glares. “This better be important. What’s up?”

“We can’t do the Christmas ice show,” Bobby explains, sheepishly, “unless you cast a spell to take care of the temperature. Otherwise the ice won’t last.”

Illyana runs the firecat through with her sword; it vanishes in a puff of yellow steam. “I caught this one in the upstairs bathroom,” she says. “I’m landlord and super and plumber. Fine,” she tells Bobby. “But just this once.”

Illyana looks up to the burgundy, cloudy sky and begins to ululate; there follow syllables in no Earthly tongue. Four electric blue demons the size of tennis shoes, with the bodies and wings of dragonflies but the heads of cats, descend and settle in the air near Bobby, making a sort of quincunx. 

And then it’s cold. Very cold. Not just cold where Bobby stands, but cold wherever he sprays his filigree ice. In five minutes a lattice of snowflakes deckles the front approach of X-Haven; in ten, cartoon animals—lobsters, badgers, hedgehogs—made of ice play on the roof; in fifteen there’s a whole winter carnival in the backyard, with slides, an ice-darts contest with ice-targets, life-size ice checkers and chess, melon ices in ice bowls, Italian ice cups….

“Thank you,” Bobby says, a little awed by the demons, or else by what Illyana made them do. The Russian woman with the enormous silver sword is still standing right in front of him, and in front of Storm.

“We had a deal,” Illyana says to Ororo. “Do you still want to go through with it?”

Storm nods. “No puns for the next 48 hours,” Illyana says, staring right at Bobby. “Or all this melts in an instant.” The cat-dragonfly-demons bob and buzz.

“Snow prob—“ begins Bobby, then realizes his mistake. “That will not be a problem, Illyana. I’ll find someplace else to put my boundless verbal energy.”

“You do that,” Illyana says. “Thank you for giving the children their holiday treats.” Her sword glows red as she walks away. She looks—different, Bobby thinks. Softer than usual. As if she were thinking about something she missed.

It’s surprisingly hard to communicate from Limbo to Earth without Illyana’s help, but Bobby has figured out where the permanent twisty cables go; a few emails back and forth to Chicago, and a few days, and Bobby is waiting for Illyana by the front door. “You may pun again,” she says.

“I wanted to thank you for the décor,” Bobby says. “I know you don’t use magic lightly. So I, uh, got in touch with a friend of ours, and we made you this.” A light dust of snow falls away from the platter that Bobby is holding, and he reveals: a black and white half-circle of bird’s milk cake.


	3. Graymalkin Lane

“How was Dartmouth?” Jean asks.

“Amazing,” Bobby says. “Think I should transfer there? I loved the party scene. Also I caught a bad guy trying to steal computers.”

Jean frowns when Bobby says “party scene,” then lets it go. “You’re here to giftwrap the mansion again?”

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Bobby says. “It’s one talent that nobody else seems to have.” All these years and he’s still defensive about the days when he got called the least powerful X-Man, just because he was the youngest, and didn’t take himself seriously. (While the actual least powerful X-Man, Warren, had…. no shortage of confidence.) Things, Jean thinks, are better now, if you don’t count the increased frequency with which reality-warpers, sentient islands and out-of-control Pentagon programs try to blow up the world. But some things never change.

“Some things never change,” Bobby says, “but as long as Ben Grimm is planning to stay in New York for Hannukah, I thought I’d come back same as always. Going to do the windows and the doors and the roof and then start with the sculpture,” he continues, running and then ice-sliding out of the rec room, then out the front door, up an ice slide, and around the side. 

It’s the second full year since the all-new team convened, the one with Logan and Kurt and Ororo and Piotr, and he’s still getting to know them—he visits the mansion a couple of times a year; but if Scott’s happy there—or “happy,” for Scott; it needs scare quotes—then everybody’s making the right choice. Especially Scott. Or Scott and Jean. Who seem very happy. The couple they always meant to be. Holding hands like teens, of course, but sounding like adults.

Bobby drapes the mansion in stars and snowflakes, laying the groundwork for ice statues and ice slides. Who deserves a statue this time around? (Cartoon animals? Michael Jackson? Steve Martin?)

He’ll need to get up to the second and third stories, and on to the roof, to get the sightlines he needs for the ice gazebo, as well as the slides. There are the shareable bedrooms left vacant for new students, the ones that he’s heard the Professor will shortly fill. There’s the one with the double doors to the balcony, the only one Warren ever used. There’s the severe third-floor window that’s always been Scott’s, which Bobby is going to need as an anchor if the ambitious Silver Surfer statue with winking, flipping multiple surfboards is going to—

Oh. There’s somebody in Scott’s room, and the curtains are open, and it isn’t Scott, and it’s somebody with dark hair, so it isn’t Jean. Bobby knows he shouldn’t look, but he wants to know, and after all, when they were all teens and still living here, any of them would have stopped to look—

Two figures, both broad-shouldered, one more than the other, are seated on Scott’s bed. The shorter one has distinctive, two-pronged dark hair, and a stunning amount of back hair, and a towel on, kissing… Scott. It’s Logan and Scott.

Bobby ice-slides all the way down to the front door and then through it, his sculptures on pause. Once indoors, he almost slips on his own ice and falls on his butt, but rights himself in a cloud of crystal and vapor. 

Jean’s in the front parlor, reading, apparently, a book called The Song of the Lark. “Um, uh, ice to—snow problem—I’ll just slush on out of here,” Bobby sputters, and then realizes he’s facing a telepath.

“I know I’m the only woman in Scott’s life,” Jean says. “That’s exactly what both of us want.” She’s smiling. She knew everything. Of course.

Bobby would have to be better at reading faces, or better at reading himself, to realize how much of what is now going on inside Bobby is something Jean long knew. But she also knows he’s not ready to say. Better change the mood. Lighten it up. That's what Bobby would do.

“I have an idea for the front lawn this time,” she continues, giving Bobby one more beat to process the discovery. “Birds. Really big birds.”

She might be joking. She might not be joking. It might just be the first thing that came to her mind. Either way, Bobby can take a joke.

One hour later the X-Mansion’s front lawn flaunts a menorah, and a shining Christmas tree with snow on its top boughs, and an entire ice scene from Sesame Street: Bert and Ernie. Kermit the Frog (with a thick ice visor). Snuffleupagus, the enormous friendly secret monster none of the adults on the show could see. And—stocky, feathered, enormous-- Big Bird.

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 1 takes place sometime during the Iceman ongoing, first series (2017). Chapter 2 takes place early on in Extraordinary X-Men. Chapter 3 takes place after Marvel Bizarre Adventures: Iceman, and before Uncanny X-Men 129. The St. Paul winter carnival is real, and very much recommended. Title by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.


End file.
